Graffiti and Street Art Dilemmas in London

Exhibition designed and created by Marcus Willcocks and artist Steve Russell. The research and production of this exhibition has been supported by Graffolution (EC FP7 project 608152), the Greater London Authority and the Extending Empathy project (AHRC).

Is there a new moment for graffiti management or affordance and urban creativity?

The role of un-commissioned forms of creative practice in our cities and neighbourhoods is currently being reviewed. Increasingly, diverse populations appear to value street art and other ideas for colourful or playful cities. But where and when is the line drawn to decide that such art is no longer ‘creative’ or ‘positive’, but instead ‘offensive’ and ‘detrimental’ to a given community or environment? Do we leave such decisions wholly to police, local councils or property management teams, or could the artists and communities affected, have not just a voice, but some collective control too?

We feel now is the time to build capacity as well as empathy for different graffiti perspectives. Further, with small interventions including this exhibition, to find new ways to prototype ideas and promote dialogue.

Marcus Willcocks and team from the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins have been collaborating with artist Steve Russell to create an experimental series of storyboards. The narratives depicted draw upon combinations of real and research-inspired scenarios. They aim to reflect some of the dilemmas faced by authorities, cultural facilitators, property managers and place creators, as well as many urban communities, who variously attempt to wrestle against or embrace instances of graffiti and street art.

There are no easy answers and the age-old binary opposition of ‘graffiti = bad’ and ‘street art = good’ is not often valid or helpful. We urgently need to design better systems to afford and manage informal creative practice, and better ways to involve more people in creatively reimagining how our shared environments should work or look.

Join us, your voice counts. What have we missed? Tell us what you think of these dilemmas, the artwork (viewable on the Graffiti Dialogues blog at: http://graffitidialogues.com/) and more.

The Graffiti Dialogues Network is supported by ESRC & DACRC practice-led research.

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